February 4, 2025 • 52 mins
Microbes: We can’t see them, but we have no choice but to live with them. Microbes have significant, enduring impacts on human health and remind us to resist the abstraction of crucial forces in our everyday lives. Welcome to a multidisciplinary conversation about microbes, featuring Amber Benezra (Gut Anthro), Gloria Chan-Sook Kim (Microbial Resolution), and Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer (American Disgust) in a wide-ranging conversation that opens up possibilities for imagining more equitable approaches to science, visualizing and embodying the microbe, and conceptualizing health at individual, societal, and planetary levels.
Amber Benezra is assistant professor of science and technology studies at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey, and is author of Gut Anthro: An Experiment in Thinking with Microbes, a finalist for the Ludwik Fleck Prize from the Society for Social Studies of Science.
Gloria Chan-Sook Kim is assistant professor of media and culture at the University of California, Riverside, and is author of Microbial Resolution: Visualization and Security in the War against Emerging Microbes.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer is professor of science and technology studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic University, and is author of American Disgust: Racism, Microbial Medicine, and the Colony Within; The Slumbering Masses: Sleep, Medicine, and Modern American Life; Theory for the World to Come: Speculative Fiction and Apocalyptic Anthropology; and Unraveling: Remaking Personhood in a Neurodiverse Age.
Praise for the books:
“We learn from microbes—and the messy, fragile, tenacious humans that study them—how much the minute details of mundane life matter. Alternately hopeful and unsettling, Gut Anthro is a book that expertly does what microbes have always done: change how we see, how we collaborate, and who we are.”
—Emily Yates-Doerr, author of The Weight of Obesity
“Gloria Chan-Sook Kim’s visual methodology proposes a clear optic for understanding how global health responses to microbial threats will fail unless we wrestle with the systems that perpetuate the conditions for the next mutant microbe on the horizon.”
—Stefanie R. Fishel, author of The Microbial State
“American Disgust pushes readers to think beyond individual taste to consider how whiteness shapes what is acceptable or profane and how to grow our capacity for the unfamiliar. It is a refreshing take on a long-debated concept.”
—Ashanté M. Reese, coeditor of Black Food Matters
Books by Amber Benezr
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Gloria Chan-Sook Kim (00:04):
How do you make war against something that
is not only not yet here, butwhose futures are radically
indeterminate?
Amber Benezra (00:13):
The whole thing about microbes is that we can
only see them through science.Knowing and seeing are very
tenuous.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer (00:21):
If the tension that we're facing in so
much stuff is its disembodimentright through its abstraction,
what are the ways that we cankind of put it back into place
or, like, surface it in oureveryday lives? Hi. I'm Matthew
Wolfmeier, and this is theUniversity of Minnesota Press
podcast. I am the author mostrecently of a book called
(00:45):
American Disgust, Racism,Microbial Medicine, and the
County Within. And I'm joined bytwo other University of
Minnesota Press authors who Iwill turn to them to introduce
themselves right now.
Amber Benezra (00:59):
Hi. I'm Amber Ben Ezra. I'm a sociocultural
anthropologist. I teach atStevens Institute of Technology,
which is a STEM school, anunlikely place for an
anthropologist to be, but that'swhere I'm at. My book is Gut
Anthro, an experiment inthinking with microbes.
My research has been workingcollaboratively with scientists
(01:20):
who work on the human microbiomefor about the past fifteen
years, and, I'm really excitedfor this conversation today.
Gloria Chan-Sook Kim (01:28):
Hi. My name is Gloria Chansook Kim. I
am a scholar of visual culture,media studies, and science and
technology studies. So my workgenerally works across histories
and theories of vision,computation and culture, and the
environmental humanities, andinfrastructure studies. I'm the
(01:48):
author of Microbial Resolution,Visualization, and Security in
the, War Against EmergingMicrobes.
I'm Assistant Professor in theDepartment of Media and Cultural
Studies at the University ofCalifornia, Riverside.
Amber Benezra (02:04):
All three of our books were writing from
different field perspectives,anthropology, media and cultural
studies, history, science andtechnology studies, and we all
have different takes on what isat stake in studying the
microbial. I'm really interestedto hear how you both came to
microbes as your subject ofstudy. What you like and what
you hate about studyingmicrobes, Amy, and if you'll
(02:25):
continue to explore microbes inyour work or your future work.
Gloria Chan-Sook Kim (02:29):
I can take the reins on that first. Thanks
for that question, Amber. Yeah.How did I come to work on
microbes? So before I startedwriting and researching and
writing this book, I wasthinking around questions around
biology, biopolitics, and, theepistemological systems systems
that work around that and frameknowledge about that.
(02:52):
And then I saw an IBMcommercial. I actually
encountered it while reading theNew York Times online. There was
a kind of, flashing banner witha red silhouetted chicken. So I
clicked on it for some reason,and then this video ad popped
up. That ad is the object that Ianalyzed in chapter one.
(03:12):
It's this, kinda shortdocumentary called Deadly
Migration, a documentary aboutthe future avian flu pandemic
that will come to kill us alland, how we can use computation
and informatics to manage thatrisk. So when I saw that, a
bunch of buttons, all of mybuttons were being hit at once.
(03:35):
Biology, biopolitics, but it wasalso intersecting with, the
informational turn. It was,really intriguing to me the way
that this was coming togetherwith this commercial that's
actually part of this larger IBMSmart Planet campaign. And it
involved global infrastructuresand all of the stuff about
(03:56):
futures that I was reallyinterested in.
I started learning about justlooking at how we were talking
about this future pandemic andabout avian flu in particular. I
started to become interested inthis concept of emerging
microbes. This particularconcept emerging microbes
pointed to this idea that, youknow, we're not talking now
(04:17):
about microbes that exist herein the present that we know are
around us, but it kind of recastthese questions I had been
thinking about for a really longtime to this hypothetical future
space. Right? So this idea thatthey're emerging, they're
constantly emerging.
We don't know when, we don'tknow how, but we know that.
Amber Benezra (04:36):
Thanks. That's great.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer (04:38):
I think I'm a really ambivalent microbe
scholar in a way. This book ismaybe kind of accidentally about
microbes. It started because Iwas really interested in the
controversies around fecalmicrobial transplants. Because
of my proximity to theUniversity of Minnesota Medical
School for a while, I was awareof people there who were kind of
(04:59):
at the forefront ofexperimenting with fecal
microbial transplants, and so Iwas just like paying attention
to what was going on. But it wasmostly the fecal side of the
transplant that I was interestedin.
This book is the third bookwhere I'm really trying to work
through this umbrellatheoretical concept the biology
(05:19):
of everyday life. It's like aclass that I teach. It's like a
research agenda, I suppose. Andfor a really long time, I was
having a hard time finding goodresearch on the kind of social
study of human shit. We had,like, a week in the biology of
everyday life class that wassupposed to be the defecation
week, and there were, like,three things that we could read.
(05:42):
And so I was, like, there's hasgot to be an emergent
scholarship in human shit. Andwhen the fecal microbial
transplant debates started, Iwas like, oh, maybe this is it.
Like, maybe we're gonna finallytip over and there's gonna be a
golden age of shit studies orsomething. That has not
happened. Although, I mean,maybe maybe we're in the kind
of, like, silver age of shitstudies because there's more and
(06:05):
more people who are working onkind of related things.
But it's really my interest inthe body and discourses of the
biological, and, the microbialkind of gets caught up in all of
that stuff. And really, I mean Iwrote the book in the weirdest
circumstances in the middle ofthe early part of the pandemic,
(06:26):
and then I was in Finland reallywondering why I had written the
book. Like, who was this for?Because I didn't know very many
people other than Amber andJamie Lorimer who were, like,
interested in microbes. And thenI bumped into a whole bunch of
people in Finland through theCenter for the Social Study of
Microbes led by Salazariola, andthey were, like, the audience
(06:50):
for the book.
And I was like, wait a minute.Like, there's a bunch of people
that are really into this, andthere's, like, a conversation
that's being had and, you know,it's just not where I'm at. And
so all of a sudden, it was,like, 2021. I was, like, I think
I need to revise this book inorder to engage with all of
these other people who areactually interested in microbes,
(07:10):
and I was not. Like, it was justlike there are these microbes in
the story, but they're notcentral to it.
But it ended up being reallyfortuitous because, like, in the
latter part of the book, Ireally try and think about the
body as a landscape and the waythat as an object and as a
phenomenological experience,thinking about how bodies are
(07:32):
laminated together into theirshared spaces as kind of these
landscapes that intersect withone another is a way to bring
together thinking about themicrobial stuff with all of the
human body stuff in ways thatweren't just about, like,
there's microbes out there, andthen there's human bodies here,
and we interact in weird ways.It's like we're just deeply
(07:53):
imbricated into one another'slives, and we need to think
about that. It was reallyclarifying for me to, like,
wrestle with microbes bothconceptually, but then also,
like, what they're actuallydoing to human bodies. But what
about you, Amber? Tell us aboutyour life with microbes.
Amber Benezra (08:09):
Well, I will just rest assured, my book talks
about shit a lot. So that is,you know, I'm on that train with
you. Absolutely. It'sunavoidable when you're talking
about gut microbes. Right?
But I also had the sameexperience because there is a
huge Scandinavian there's, like,people in Sweden, people in
Iceland, people in in Finlandwho are really deeply concerned
(08:31):
with microbe social scientists.And it is a you're right. It's
not something that we we havehere in The US. It's very
different. My story is kind ofpretty basic.
I was a graduate student. I wasdeveloping a dissertation
project about I was reallyinterested in biobanks and
genetic relatedness as we arecoming to understand it and,
(08:53):
like, you know, deep historiesof ideas of kinship and
anthropology. I was actuallyreally interested in Mormons
and, like, archival genealogiesand how genetic testing is
changing that kind of recordkeeping. The point is I was in a
class called anthropology ofscience, taught by Emily Martin
at NYU. One day after class, shejust was like, you should look
(09:15):
into the Human MicrobiomeProject.
This was 02/2009, so it was theyear that that project started.
She was like, you should lookinto this human microbiome
project. I think you wouldreally be interested in it, and
it would be really right up youralley. And I was like, okay. And
then I just started looking intothat.
You know, it was an NIH fundedproject trying to determine what
the most healthy what's ahealthy human microbiome. Right?
(09:36):
That project failed, and theywere like, we can't figure that
out. It's not the same foreveryone, obviously. But, yeah,
I just sort of naively started,emailing all the PIs on that
project, and Jeff Gordon wroteme back.
Actually, he called me on thephone, and the rest is sort of
history, but it was so I feellike I just fell head first into
my groves very unintentionally.I am curious to hear if if
(09:58):
there's anything you hate aboutworking on microbes and if it's
something you'll continue. I'vebeen thinking a lot recently
about my future work, and I feelso tied to microbes. But then
I'm like, maybe I'll just choosesomething completely different.
Gloria Chan-Sook Kim (10:12):
I feel really sorely left out here that
I don't write more about poop,because if you know anything
about me, which I don't expectyou any of you to, I I'm
fascinated by poop, and I ifthere's something called
defecation week, I'll be there.I I think it's really
(10:33):
interesting the ways that we'retalking about microbes as I also
got into microbes accidentally.You know, it was a way for me to
talk about making futuresoperable and making planets
operable and systems operable.And, moreover, to this point
about what we love or hate aboutworking with microbes, because
(10:55):
I'm I use microbes in a way tothink about futures and, you
know, scales of the planet andthe body and forms of knowledge
and knowledge making. What Ilove about working with microbes
is that, it becomes this objectwhere we can start thinking
about all of these things.
So when I'm thinking aboutemergence, that kind of quality
of microbes that I'm dealingwith, you know, it is this
(11:17):
really interestingepistemological problem of,
right, so we're gonna build awar against emerging microbes,
right, so then how do you dothat, right, how do you make war
against something that is notonly not yet here but whose
futures are radicallyindeterminate, right? So what
does that look like? So itbecomes this really rich way of
(11:39):
thinking about futures and howthey can be made operational.
And then microbes kind of leadme to think about a a range of
questions, including, you know,how are we gonna think about
life and habitability or evenwhat it means and feels like to
be together on this planet inthe future. So those are things
(12:01):
that I love about working withmicrobes.
One thing that's been a realchallenge, because I work with
contemporary pandemiclandscapes, is things are
happening all the time and itsometimes feels like you're
trying to trace a moving object.So that's been a real challenge.
What about you, Matthew?
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer (12:19):
I don't think I have any purposeful
plans to spend more time withmicrobes as a research object.
But I I say that with somereservations because I think
that one of the things that thisrecent experience has done for
me is it's, like, opened up aregister in a way where it's,
like, now in anything that Ithink about, the question is
what's the microbial's role inwhatever this thing is? I think
(12:44):
it's about seeing the microbialor, like, taking it into
consideration in a way andrecognizing that alongside with
all of these other features inour, like, social and
environmental worlds that weinhabit that, like, the
microbial is something thatneeds to be paid attention to.
That doesn't necessarily meanthat it's, like, a main
character in the story for me,but that it is a character or
(13:06):
set of characters in the storyand making sure that whatever
I'm thinking about makes roomfor the microbial to insist on
its presence seems reallyimportant. I have a hard time
staying put with an object, sothe prospect that I would spend
more time with microbes in adirect way is always it's like
the kind of thing that I refuseto do, but it's like they're
(13:28):
companions and recognizing thatcompanionship in a kind of
scholarly sense seems reallyimportant.
This is a collective thing.Right? That, like, what we're
doing is trying to drawattention to all of these other
features of our worlds and thathopefully what we're doing is
making it an additive projectfor everybody. Right? That it's
not just for us as individualresearchers, but other people
(13:49):
too.
Amber Benezra (13:51):
I agree with you. Absolutely. And I think that's
what I would answer is my reasonfor loving microbiome or
microbes is that the microbiomeis such a biosocial object. It's
an inroad with scientists orbiological scientists in a way
that the environmental impact ofgetting cancer or not can be
debatable. It's hard to tracethose things back to a cause.
(14:13):
When you're talking aboutmicrobiome, you can't leave out
environmental factors. Right?Things like nutrition,
geography, like, all the thingsthat go into informing what
microbial populations we haveare essentially social and
intimate in all these things. Soas a person who wants to work
with scientists, it's like anace up my sleeve that I'm like,
but you have to pay attention tothe social in these these
(14:35):
circumstances. But I think likeyou're saying, Matthew, also, we
all as humans have to payattention to the micro real,
whether we want to or not.
All the time, the scientists Iwork with were like, the
microbes world, we just live init, which I think is really
true.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer (14:50):
So the question that I have for the
three of us is kind of meplaying devil's advocate. I'm
wondering if, focusing onmicrobes from the humanities and
social sciences is kind offrivolous in a way. What are the
politics of focusing on themicrobial instead of something
that might be widely accepted asmore pressing? I see both of
(15:11):
your books as being, like,deeply political in their
commitments, but I wonder howyou, like, talk about those
politics when you're talkingabout your projects to other
people.
Amber Benezra (15:22):
I think both of our both Glorian and my books
address objects in human health,so it immediately gives it some
kind of value to other peoplebecause of that sort of
translational aspect of it. ButI it is I I talk about this in
my book a little bit that I havebeen accused by other
anthropologists as not havinghuman cultural lives at the
(15:43):
center of my work. The stakeswhen you're talking about
microbial worlds, they moreabstracted, but especially like
in light of recent politicalsituations and election outcomes
in this country, I'm I've beenasking myself what academia
matters at all. Right? Like, ifthe world has gone to to
garbage, like, what are we doingwith ourselves?
(16:06):
My central focus always is howto bring the biological and
social sciences together. And,again, like, I feel like
microbiome work is the way to dothis, and I desperately want
science to be better than it is.Right? To be more equitable, to
be doing better work, to drawall the things you talk about in
your book, Matthew, about justthe persistence of white
(16:28):
supremacy. And I think, Gloria,you addressed this too, the idea
of bioeconomies that aren'tconcerned necessarily with
fairness or equity or who is thefocus of these kinds of things.
I want science to be better. Iwanna be trying to be a part of
how to do that. And so for me,that's why microbiome work seems
(16:49):
like the stakes are high. Like,there seems like there is a lot
to be done here that is valuableand not frivolous. And also
because I do believe that thereis a lot at stake for humans if
we don't get our shit togetherfiguring out about how to live
with microbes, what, you know,or what they're doing or what
our relationships are with them.
A sort of a global outcomeclimate environment, our health,
(17:12):
the health of our planet. Ithink there is some urgency to
that. To me, it doesn't feelfrivolous, but I definitely see
that framing and how it lookslike that and how I often have
to explain myself to othersocial scientists in terms of
the significances of this work.
Gloria Chan-Sook Kim (17:29):
I think my experience working with microbes
in the humanities has been alittle bit different, you know,
to this question of itsfrivolity. I hadn't really,
fortunately, been challenged onthat front, and I so I think I'm
pushing back a bit on thepremise of that question because
I think the microbial is widelyconsidered to be a pressing
(17:49):
topic right now, and that seemsto be the case for me both in
and, outside of the humanitiesand social sciences, but also in
and outside of academia. This isespecially so right now after
we've just I I I don't wanna saycome out of a long pandemic, but
we're living under this kind oflong kind of unending shadow of
(18:10):
whatever that was. And we areliving amid these landscapes of
all sorts of food crises of ecoli and salmonella outbreaks
that are a consequence the waythe world is now put together.
You know, it also comes up withthis particular kind of
salience, as Amber, you pointedout with the recent elections
(18:32):
and the nomination of a newsecretary of health who is
against universal vaccination.
So now many people are worriedabout what that will look like.
I also think that just climatecatastrophe is hurdling all
sorts of kind of microbes at usand, you know, like you, Amber,
we have no choice but to dealwith them. So to me, the
(18:53):
microbial seems very much at theforefront of a lot of
discussions happening in variousareas across academia and not,
but then also in, you know,let's say also in government and
policy, but also, like, expertsand just kind of everyday people
thinking about how to kinda geton with living. I think that
when the humanities and socialsciences take up the microbe as
(19:17):
we do in our three books, themicrobe kind of comes up as this
key element that mediatesbetween all of these registers,
between politics and culture,and moves between all of these
kinds of relations of social,scalar, bodily, and ontological
difference. When we think aboutit in the humanities and social
(19:39):
sciences, it seems to registerbroader ways of thinking about
living and survival and howwe're gonna do that.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer (19:48):
Yeah. I mean, I think about it a lot
from the perspective ofAmericans have been pretty well
protected from things likechronic dysentery.
Gloria Chan-Sook Kim (19:57):
Mhmm.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer (19:58):
And with changing regulations around
pollution and water cleanlinesslevels and stuff like that, we
might not be quite as protectedfrom that stuff in the near
future.
Gloria Chan-Sook Kim (20:09):
Yeah.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer (20:10):
And, I mean, I sometimes think that,
like and this is especially truein, like, medical anthropology
and medical sociology, that whatwe focus on in the discipline
overrepresents things that haveminimal impact on global
populations, which is not tominimize those conditions like
HIV AIDS, the number of peoplewho focus on that, and the
(20:32):
number of people who arediagnosed with HIV AIDS these
days is a smaller and smallernumber despite its enormous
prevalence in our field. Butwhen you think about the impacts
that microbes have on people'senduring health, that's pretty
much everybody. Right? And theway that we don't center
conversations like that seemlike real detriments to what
(20:55):
we're doing as a scientist andpeople in the humanities. Right?
I'm glad that both of you feellike it's maybe more central in
some ways than I sometimesperceive it to be. I think my
experience has often been that Ifeel like I'm talking about
things that other people thinkare fringe topics. Like, my
first book was about sleep andsleep disorders, and that people
(21:18):
didn't immediately think, like,oh, right. We should all be
working on sleep because, like,that's a problem that everybody
has, was really confounding tome. Like, there's, like, no
anthropology of sleep before02/2002.
Like, what's happening if we'reignoring these things that are
such important aspects in oureveryday lives, but also just
(21:39):
our livelihood? So I mean, Ikinda think it's intensely
political to think about thisstuff, and we'll probably be
revealed to be even morepolitical as we move forward
over the next few years becausewe'll see, like, what happens
when you take away all of theprotections that we have to,
keep us safe from microbes.Like, if we're gonna stop
(22:00):
pasteurizing milk, that's gonnabe a real doozy.
Gloria Chan-Sook Kim (22:04):
Yeah. Okay. So, I want to turn to talk
about the material of microbes,particularly the material
semiotics. So across our threebooks, we each are dealing with
microbes as is really, kind ofalmost endlessly mutable
entities. Like, they can bebrought from one place to the
(22:25):
other.
They can be transmuted from thisform to the lab, to this, to
that. This happens not onlybecause microbes are put through
various processes in theexperiments and scientific
projects that we're eachcharting out. So, you know, for
instance, Matthew, the making offecal transplant matter or
things like fermentation andpickle juice or shotgun
(22:46):
sequencing or, the presence orabsence of nutrition for you,
Amber, or in me, it's theinsertion of gene segments into
plasmid rings to reanimate oldviruses or, you know, the
speculative imaging technologiesthat are supposed to bring these
things into view. These arescientific processes, but
they're not only that. As thesethings are happening, they're
(23:09):
also moments that change thekind of material semiotics, the
material context in whichmicrobes are placed.
So, you know, whether it'splaced in the computational
space or in a vaginal space orin a fecal space, I'm interested
in the ways that that thenalters what microbes come to
mean. I'd be really interestedin talking about the material
(23:31):
semiotics of microbes and, youknow, how did the changing
material context in whichmicrobes were placed alter what
they meant and how they gettaken up, or how they don't get
taken up in the social realm?
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer (23:47):
I mean, I think the example that most
immediately comes to mind for meis really about fecal microbial
transplants. When people arethinking through whether or not
they're willing to put somebodyelse's microbes into their body,
they become different kinds ofthings. Your microbes are fine
(24:08):
in your body. Whatever is goingon over there is, like, just
fine for most people, but theprospect of using them
therapeutically for illnesses inyour body suddenly raises all
these questions. That's reallyat the heart of the
controversies around fecalmicrobial transplants or at
(24:29):
least that's the argument that Imake in the book that, like,
people can kind of think aboutmicrobes in the abstract and be
okay with them.
And I mean people at the Foodand Drug Administration and the
Center for Disease Control andNational Institutes of Health.
Like, the abstract idea ofmicrobes is just fine for most
people. When you start to thinkabout the actual practice of
(24:53):
taking donor feces and puttingit through a distillation
process and then using it as atherapeutic for a patient, like,
that troubles a lot of people,and they have a hard time really
naming why it's so troubling tothem. That's one of the things I
wrestle with in the book is,like, why are we so troubled by
the biological as a therapeutic?Really, that's, like, the
(25:15):
narrative arc of the book.
Like, why is the biologicaldangerous when something like
the pharmaceutical seems to bejust safe for most people? And
when you think about those twothings in parallel, like, most
people are just fine with mostpharmaceutical chemicals all the
time. Like, wherever they are,they're like a benevolent
(25:36):
therapeutic. But when you thinkabout biological material, it's
okay over there, but it's notokay if you're gonna put it into
my body. Working through thatcentral problem was really the
the key for me in thinkingthrough exactly the material
semiotics of microbes.
Like, what how do you deal withthe inherent meanings that
(25:58):
become associated with themicrobial, and can you untangle
them in order to make themtherapeutic, in an unproblematic
way? I think I'm ultimately kindof pessimistic about it because
I really see racism as being oneof those central semiotic
valences that get applied tomicrobes. And so we we kind of
(26:21):
can't purify them. We can washthem. And any attempt to create
a pharmaceutical microbe in thesense that you're creating it in
a lab doesn't seem to work inthe way that we need it to work.
And so as long as microbes carrythe semiotic weight that they do
as kinda cultural objects,they'll never really achieve the
(26:44):
full potency of their, like,therapeutic potential.
Gloria Chan-Sook Kim (26:48):
I I think that's a fascinating response.
I'm wondering about the fecalmatter of microbes. I mean, that
is a pretty potent materialsemiotic. Right? And so, you
know, I'm thinking about thevarious ways that it has to be
treated in order to kind ofreach therapeutic status in your
book.
I mean, I'm I'm trying to thinkthrough the materiality of poo
(27:09):
here. There's something aboutthe way that, shit is made in
the body that seems to indexeverything about one's body, a
very particular person. And thento have to replace those
pathogens or those microbes inanother person, there's
something so difficult aboutthat.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer (27:27):
I was just gonna agree. I mean, I
think it's so complicated. Shitis such a terrible symbol in a
way, and the reality of tryingto deal with it is always caught
up in all of this baggage.Right? And one of the things
that I have been reallyinterested in, like, as a
parent, but also someone whoreads a lot of parenting guides
(27:48):
as critical objects.
You know, one of the firstthings that happened to me as a
parent is all of the weird hangups I might have had about human
waste just had to be washed awaybecause, like, I have to deal
with a poopy kid. And, like,when you have to deal with other
people's shit, it just becomes adifferent kind of thing. It
enters a different semioticspace. And I had a uncle who was
(28:10):
a janitor for most of hiscareer, and he would always,
like, chide us for not cleaningthe toilets at my grandmother's
house. He was like, just put ona glove and scrub it.
You know, it's like just shit.As a 13 year old, I was like,
what is he talking about? Like,that's mortifying. But, like, as
a parent, I totally get it. Andit's so weird to me.
Right? It's it's weird that,like, you can have all of these
(28:33):
parents who are doctors or FDApolicymakers, and they can't
inhabit that parenting spacewhere it's like, well, it's just
shit for the most part. Right?And their role as medical
experts do. Right?
That they succumb to all of thedisgust that is associated with
biological materials, and theyjust can't extricate themselves
(28:53):
from it.
Gloria Chan-Sook Kim (28:55):
As I was reading your book, I was
thinking about how some parentsrelate to their infants' shit.
For me, it's how I relate to mydog's shit. So that's another
material semiotic that surfacesfor me in this work where it's
about the the body that it comesfrom and the intimacy and
proximity that one has withthat. I think that's
(29:15):
fascinating. And and I thinkthat just the way that fetal
transplants work, like, wherethey have to enter the body of
the recipient seems to kind ofcancel some kind of fundamental
grammar of the body that we havecome to accept.
And I'm I'm really eager to hearfrom you. You're bringing to
mind the ways that you'retalking about race and microbes.
(29:36):
And I was thinking, so microbesare this thing that carry all of
it's so hard to wash whateverracializations around it accrue.
You know, I'm thinking of theHeLa cell by contrast. So what's
the difference?
This isn't a question for you,but something for me to think
about. What is the differencebetween a cell and a microbe?
(29:56):
They seem to be different kindsof objects circulating in these
ways and able to attach anddetach from concepts.
Amber Benezra (30:03):
It's funny because just this week I taught
my students an introduction toscience and technology studies
about material semiotics. Theseare, you know, mostly
engineering students. I'm tryingto get them to understand this.
I was like, do you know whatsemiotics is? Here's a history
of this whole field in fiveseconds.
There's simultaneously always arelationship between things and
between concepts. And you can'ttake those things apart. I'm
(30:26):
like, that's my one second, youknow, definition of material
semiotics. So it's justinteresting that you're bringing
this question to us today. Iwanted to respond to Matthew's
comment just because I wasthinking about, when you were
saying your biology is fine overthere.
Right? It made me think of thisSeinfeld joke once where he was
like, you know, other people'shair were like, we love all of
(30:48):
we run our fingers through it,we like will kiss someone's head
with their hair, but their onesingle hair in our food is like,
get out of here, like this isunbearable disgust. Right? In
questions actually that I hadthought of for both of you it
sort of encompassed in all ofthis is that it's like having
microbes or biology out ofplace. The same goes for like a
(31:10):
vaginal seeding right?
Right? So there's a lot in thevaginal microbiome that's really
valuable to vaginal birth andyou know that's when kids become
inoculated with all of thesemicrobes when they're born and
so if babies are born by csection they get skin microbes
instead, right? So that's awhole thing. So there are a
bunch of scientists I knowwanted to do experiments where
they a mother was giving birthby c section. They wanted to
(31:32):
just take her vaginal microbesand swab the baby's face or
mouth with it.
And hospitals were like nofucking way. They're like no No
IRB is gonna give you approval.And, you know, the PI's are
like, but these are the microbeskids would get if they were
going through the vaginal canalof their own mother. And
hospitals were like, absolutelynot. Can you do that right?
(31:53):
So it's like this biology out ofplace idea that is very that I
think there is discussed andsome sort of disturbance that
comes up for us. The scientistsI work with somehow take these
so they were working with fecalsamples that arrive in like just
big tubes of shit, and they haveto pulverize them and they do
that while the shit is frozenand they do it as fast as they
(32:16):
can so that it doesn't becomemore shit like, right? Like they
do not wanna remember what itis. And I think that they have
devised this method to distancethemselves from that biology out
of place because they just startextracting RNA, right? They're
continuously purifying thesample.
It becomes less and less likeshit, right, they're taking out
the microbial genomes. And so, Iit's some kind of altering of
(32:39):
the material part of thematerial semiotic to make it
more palatable, to make itsomehow more a scientific
object. And I'm just thinking ofall this stuff for the first
time as we're talking about it,which is just really
interesting. And I think myquestion to you is gonna be,
Matthew, like, you know, youtalk about unsettling disgust
and I'm wondering if thescientists themselves need
(32:59):
because they were verydisconnected from where the
samples were coming from, right,in urban Bangladesh, right, and
those bodies and there's exactlywhat you're talking about so
much race and ethnicity andclass and nationhood and all
kinds of things wrapped up inthose samples. Because when
scientists can just see thesamples as microbes and not
people, it's also somehow safer.
So then microbes can stand infor people in a more safe way
(33:23):
which is also problematic. So Iwonder like is the discuss
necessary? Right when they'repulverizing actual shit, they
have to remember it came from ahuman butthole. Like, they when
they're just sequencing, youknow, microbial genes, they
don't have to think about thatat all. And maybe that's a
problem with science.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer (33:43):
Yeah. I mean, I I don't know. I mean,
I'm a big proponent of theexperience of disgust. Right? I
mean, I think that that's one ofthe things I really came around
to in working on the book wasour lives are too devoid of
disgust in a weird way.
It's like we're disgusted by thewrong things in some sense. We
need to reinject theopportunities for us to be
(34:04):
disgusted around the right kindsof things. Right? Because when
we're disgusted, it kind ofhelps us think about the
parameters of what's okay andwhat's not okay and why certain
things are not okay. Then that'san opportunity to work through
that disgust.
I mean I tell people that thatbook is like a love letter to
Mary Douglas and Julia Kristeva,which I think it is. Yeah I mean
(34:24):
I I stand by it, but like theyyou know were really critical in
helping me think about like whywe don't experience disgust or
why we don't want to experiencedisgust. And I work with
students all the time on tryingto get them to discuss
themselves within parametersthat they feel okay with. In
that biology of everyday lifeclass, I have them do these
(34:45):
experiments where they have to,like, write auto ethnographies
about physiological processes,and they have to create rules
to, like, eat differently. So,like, students will eat without
using utensils for a week andcome into contact with their
food in ways that they never do.
And they often narrate that,like, in the beginning, it's
kinda disgusting, but thenthey're kind of okay with it.
(35:07):
And, like, where does thedisgust go? And thinking about
that is really helpful. Like,where does it go? Like, it it
can disappear almostimmediately.
Right? When you think aboutthose scientists, like, breaking
up those poop icicles, it's likeyou kind of want them to have
that experience of disgust. Youlike I take it from what you
were your book that like youkind of want them to remember
(35:30):
and not be able to work asquickly as they do in order to
like remember that there'speople. And that maybe in the
remembrance of those people ithelps them unsettle some of the
assumptions that are baked intowhat they're about to do with
that RNA sequencing. I don'tknow, I'm a big proponent of
being grossed out.
Gloria Chan-Sook Kim (35:50):
I love that. I love being grossed out.
I think it's a beautiful,liminal experience, and I I have
to admit my thresholds ofdisgust are pretty wide. But,
you know, I'm thinking aboutthat frozen about the poopsicles
in your book, Amber, and I wasfascinated by that because I was
(36:11):
understanding that as yetanother biomedical kind of I
guess we can kinda loosely callit a biomedical intervention,
but this kind of strategy tochange the material semiotics
around feces by changing itsstates, right? So there's some
really amazing writing aboutrefrigeration and cold storage
and freezing by Joanna Radinthat would shine some beautiful
(36:32):
light on poopsicles.
But as we're talking about thisstuff and these kind of changing
states of microbes and how,Amber, you wish that scientists
would deal with the real kind ofmelted mess of shit because it
helps them to remember wherethese come from and what what
they're attached to. It makes methink about a different kind of
material semiotics in my bookwhere now I'm just really sad
(36:54):
that I don't write about poo. Inthe last, couple chapters of my
book, I talk about this kind of,yeah, Silicon Valley led effort
to create an atlas of all themicrobes in the world. And this
atlas is this, speculativeendeavor. It's tied to this
total Silicon Valley dream ofmaking the world into this kind
(37:16):
of vast platform ofbioinformational sharing and
pushing and surveillance.
Part of that dream comes fromthis one scientist entrepreneur
who became interested inemerging microbes and who had
this idea of creating this kindof global atlas of all microbes
and one that will be constantlyupdated because they're always
(37:38):
emerging. So this scientistentrepreneur became interested
in emerging microbes when henoticed, so he was working in
Cameron at the time, and henoticed that there were a lot of
hunters hunting for meat injungles. And in taking note of
the close bodily contact betweenthese hunters and the animals
(37:58):
that they would hunt, Hethought, you know, this is a
great way to, you know, kind ofanticipate how viruses will
spill over from humans to fromanimals into humans and create
these pandemics of the future.The whole thing is this
infrastructure, this system tomove viruses found in animals
through all sorts of materialtransformations. So it's in the
(38:19):
animal body, then you sample theblood of the animal and the
person who hunted them and thenpeople around them, and then
that stuff gets transformed intobioinformational stuff that can
be kinda stored on a database.
And then the ways that thatmoves from an extremely
racialized, deeply colonial kindof practice into this kind of
(38:40):
abstract realm of computation,is an interesting kind of
transformation for me becauseone of the things that people
often think of when they thinkabout data and this kind of
computational space, there areno bodies in it. It seems to be
free of many of those frictions.But, yeah, like you, Amber, I
wish that there were I mean,there are ways in which these
(39:01):
concepts remain attached in thatkind of bioinformational space,
but I wish those abstractionswere not as as easy or or clean.
Amber Benezra (39:10):
I think what you're saying is very tied to
the theme of your book. The datais the way of seeing now. I
mean, for sure in humanmicrobiome, no one uses
microscopes. Absolutely not.Right?
They're only looking atmicrobial genomics. So the way
you see what microbe species arethere is by looking at what
genes are there. These ways ofseeing it are so abstracted that
(39:32):
there's almost no material tothe material anymore. Right? So
I think I mean, this is actuallythe question I was going to ask
you, which is that, I mean, forall of us, is there a a real
material functioning in life ofmicrobes outside of human
surveillance?
I mean, what are we know thatsometimes we can see them in
under microscopes. We know whenwe get sick. We think of the
(39:53):
presence of pathogens as makingus ill. We can sequence their
genomes, but the whole thingabout microbes is that you can
only like, we can only see themthrough science. And I know
there are other people workingon things like shamanistic
histories, you know, of peopleknowing the presence of
microbes, but knowing and seeingare very tenuous Mhmm.
(40:14):
There. Right?
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer (40:15):
Yeah. I I was thinking about a pitch for
an old project while while I wasreading Gloria's book. Gloria
does such a good job of thinkingabout the high-tech resolution
of the microbial, right, and howit is entering into all of
these, like, spheres ofconsumption for us. Right? That
we're, like, confronted withimages of microbes in ways that
we hadn't been twenty years agofor sure.
(40:37):
Right? A while ago, I waspitching this idea that should
have people wear entirely whiteoutfits with, like, white gloves
and spend a day in all sorts ofdifferent contexts to show how
dirty they get and then displaythose suits. Right? So, like,
have people ride the subway inNew York City, have people walk
(40:58):
along streetsides in suburbanNew Jersey, have someone wear
that same suit in aslaughterhouse, like, all those
kinds of places to really tryand, like, surface all of these
microbial interactions thatpeople have, but we don't really
account for them. Right?
And that was, like, a pitch thatI made before the pandemic. And
then during the pandemic, Ireally became like, I've always
(41:19):
been a handwashing advocate, butall the pandemic made me like a
proselytizer around handwashing.Like, I'm always troubled going
to men's restrooms because thenumber of men who don't wash
their hands after they use theurinal where the toilet is
constantly confounding, and Idon't know what to do about
that. But it was like thismoment where, like, you can see,
(41:40):
or, like, I'm starting to seethe microbes. Right?
What we're all struggling withis, like, how do you re embody
the microbial If the tensionthat we're facing in so much
stuff is its disembodiment,right, through its abstraction,
what are the ways that we cankind of put it back into place
or, like, surface it in oureveryday lives in ways that are
safe, that aren't about E. Colioutbreaks, but instead about,
(42:04):
like, what are the microbialinteractions that you're having
in your refrigerator thismorning, and how are you
changing those microbialinteractions by cooking or
otherwise preparing whatever itis that you're about to eat, and
what's happening when you're inthe shower. And so creating
those kinds of ways to see andinteract with the microbial
seems like a really importantnext step in thinking about how
(42:26):
do we resist the, like, pureabstraction of these forces in
our everyday lives.
Gloria Chan-Sook Kim (42:31):
Yeah. For me, that question of
materialization, I feel it alittle differently because the
thing in microbial resolutionthat I'm dealing with is this
problematic project to turn thisthing that exists in a state of
pure possibility. Right? Justlike the next thing. Right?
(42:52):
It doesn't matter if, you know,we already we're still or just
in the long tail end or whateverthis is in a pandemic. We're
still looking to the next thing.That emphasis on emergence and
trying to materialize that,that's the kind of crux of the
question of materiality in mybook. Yeah. You're prompted to
think about this in terms ofmaterialism as a rich one for
(43:13):
me.
So one question that I keptturning around in my head, you
know, what is the materialstatus of an emerging microbe?
What does it mean to, you know,if emergence signals this realm
of unknowable or non knowablekind of open possibility, then
how, in the war on emergingmicrobes does that kind of
(43:36):
amorphousness and that nonknowledge or that non knowable
quality become transfigured intosomething that can be governed
or governed through. And so,like, crucially for me, what
that means is that when emergingmicrobes are materialized, what
is materialized is this kind of,you know, they have to be
materialized with, this nonknowledge and this kind of
(43:57):
amorphousness intact. So thething that is materialized is
not like, yes. I know it's here.
The thing that has to come intobeing and, come into form as a
kind of governable object isthis amorphous moving target. So
for me, it's hard to think outof a kind of surveillance
structure because the war onemerging microbes is this whole
(44:18):
project to secure by scanningthe entire planet, and how to
make that operable. But, youknow, Stephanie Fischel in the
microbial state has some reallygreat work that works through a
new materialism to think througha new kind of global politics of
thriving through the kind ofmaterial realities of microbes.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer (44:37):
So I I'm thinking about thriving too,
Gloria, that, like, one of thethings that we're all wrestling
with is really the ambivalentrule of microbial knowledge in
some way. Right? That it'simportant to know about
microbes, but then what do youdo with that knowledge? There's,
like, dangers associated withmicrobial knowledge and in terms
(44:59):
of, like, their weaponization.And there are real benefits to
it too.
Right? That being able to testfor certain kinds of
environmental dangers is reallyimportant. But, like, I end my
book with, like, realirresolution, it feels like we
keep kind of taking microbesseriously in medicine and global
(45:20):
public health, and then we turnaway from it. And, like, there's
this turn to and away frommicrobes over and over again.
And when we kinda get lazy aboutit, then we remember that we
have to pay attention tomicrobes because they're kind of
a problem.
But there doesn't seem to be alot of financial incentives for
pharmaceutical companies toactually do something proactive
(45:42):
about microbes outside of, like,surveillance medicine in some
respects. So I wonder if youboth could help me think about,
do microbes offer us some kindof post capitalist opportunity
or some kind of anti colonialopportunity? What is, like, the
possibility of the microbe thatwe want to embrace in thinking
(46:05):
about, like, our collectivefutures?
Amber Benezra (46:08):
I mean this is what I'm thinking about in terms
of my next step, my nextresearch with microbes and in
the last couple of years I'vewritten a lot about race in the
microbiome and how race keepsgetting reified in in human
microbiome studies but alsowe're at a moment where you know
microbiome science is very new.It is only fifteen years old.
(46:31):
And there is an opportunity,there's an opening here and I
think this is just my book cameout last year, I gave 14 talks
last year. More than half ofthem were two microbiology
departments that invited me tocome speak. So that I feel like
is there's a lot of promisethere And I often gave the this
race talk to them about howusing race as a proxy as a
(46:54):
population descriptor whenyou're looking at, you know,
microbes because it it keepscoming up in like many studies.
People of this race have thesemicrobes in their gut or people
of this race have these microbesin their vaginas, right? So that
we just this keeps like beingreplicated all these medical
racism and I've been able totalk to these scientists about
making their science betterwhich is really the key way to
(47:17):
get in with scientists is likeconvince them it's valuable to
them and saying your data willbe more exact if you're looking
at environmental toxins, diet,all the other things that
actually shape your microbiomeand not just using race as kind
of a sloppy lazy proxy fordescribing populations of
people. I feel like there's apossibility there to make a
(47:40):
change in these legacies ofracializing. There's a little
bit of momentum and enough otherand junior scientists working on
this who care about making thesechanges where we can kind of get
in on the ground floor to belike, okay. And you know,
there's a whole other side.
All the malnutrition stuff thatI was working on that is is in
the book is very much focused oncreating a saleable probiotic
(48:04):
that's going to fix a brokenmicrobiome. Right? And so that's
kind of the the other spec endof the spectrum of what you're
talking about. Thecommercialization of microbiome
treatments or microbiome derivedfoods or all these kinds of
therapies is extremelycapitalist. Right?
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer (48:20):
What I was thinking about in your
discussion of ghosting race inthe book, maybe it's an
opportunity to get people tothink with different kinds of
variables instead of race. Theway that race keeps creeping
back into science and medicineis so flummoxing, and it's like
they just don't have theconceptual tools to stop
(48:43):
thinking about race. And, youknow, maybe this is one way to
build an anti racist science andmedicine that's like, we need to
focus on these variables, notthose variables that aren't
real.
Gloria Chan-Sook Kim (48:58):
My response is a little more and
and the things that I hope I canoffer are much more modest. Of
course, we all hope for a farmore just future, and I can't
speak to what alternatives wouldbe except in terms of, for me,
kind of speculative hopefulterm. In the work that I do, I'm
(49:19):
interested in understanding thiscultural register. We have this
war, on emerging microbes. It'spremised on this irresolvable
tension.
We have to secure thisunsecurable thing called
emergence. A world kind of getsbuilt through that dynamic. How
do kind of economic systems,infrastructures, and policy get
(49:42):
built upon this irresolvablekind of crops? But also and kind
of more fundamentally, I'm alsointerested in the kind of
affective and epistemologicaland political registers of
contemporary culture and howthis kind of irresolvable
tension becomes a mode, or thiskind of substrate of existence.
(50:02):
In the book when I startthinking about this tension,
like what does it mean to mountthis project on this
irresolvable tension and then tokind of build it out this way.
What we have by the end of thebook is this picture in which we
trace through the examples andthe analysis the ways that this
system has an attendant otherset of irresolvable tensions at
(50:25):
its core. It produces these kindof other irresolvable tensions.
So for instance, between, youknow, humanitarian and
capitalism and between thebiological or biospheric and
then the economic and thenbetween global health and
militarized approach to seeingthe world. Within this program,
the kind of divergent aims ofthese kind of areas become and
(50:47):
are made coterminous. So then,you know, I'm particularly
interested in how this happensthrough technological
proliferation, right?
We just have to keep buildingtechnologies and optimize the
world as this platform so thatthese things can be done. And if
we do it, then these things thatseem to be contradictory will
come into some kind ofharmonization. You know,
(51:07):
humanitarian efforts andcapitalism can really kind of
meet happily if we just kind ofproceed this way. What I hope I
can offer is just in kind oftracing a way to contextualize
and understand why things feelso bad, why things feel so hard,
like, how is it that we have allof this data and we can do all
(51:30):
of these things with data? Wehave all of this power and
states have this incredibleeconomic clout and there's all
of this goodwill and all of thisexists, but we can't.
One thing we can kind of look atis the way that, technocratic
modes of governance have kindacome to the floor as this kind
of answer to all of theseproblems and the thing that's
(51:52):
gonna massage out all of theseinconsistencies. If we can kinda
see that as this problem, thenwe can also point to it, and
it's kind of a reversal as apossible way out.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer (52:03):
Well, thanks to you both, and thanks
for having this conversation.Maybe I'll invite us all to go
do something gross.
Gloria Chan-Sook Kim (52:11):
Yeah. I hope to meet you all in person
one day and toast with probablya cocktail consisting of many
microbes.
Amber Benezra (52:20):
Absolutely. We have to get our material part of
our collaboration here. We'vehad our semiotic. We need the
material.
Narrator (52:27):
This has been a University of Minnesota press
production. Books by Amber BenEzra, Gloria Chansook Kim, and
Matthew Wolfmeyer are availablefrom University of Minnesota
Press. Thank you for listening.
How do you make war against something that
is not only not yet here, butwhose futures are radically
indeterminate?
Amber Benezra (00:13):
The whole thing about microbes is that we can
only see them through science.Knowing and seeing are very
tenuous.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer (00:21):
If the tension that we're facing in so
much stuff is its disembodimentright through its abstraction,
what are the ways that we cankind of put it back into place
or, like, surface it in oureveryday lives? Hi. I'm Matthew
Wolfmeier, and this is theUniversity of Minnesota Press
podcast. I am the author mostrecently of a book called
(00:45):
American Disgust, Racism,Microbial Medicine, and the
County Within. And I'm joined bytwo other University of
Minnesota Press authors who Iwill turn to them to introduce
themselves right now.
Amber Benezra (00:59):
Hi. I'm Amber Ben Ezra. I'm a sociocultural
anthropologist. I teach atStevens Institute of Technology,
which is a STEM school, anunlikely place for an
anthropologist to be, but that'swhere I'm at. My book is Gut
Anthro, an experiment inthinking with microbes.
My research has been workingcollaboratively with scientists
(01:20):
who work on the human microbiomefor about the past fifteen
years, and, I'm really excitedfor this conversation today.
Gloria Chan-Sook Kim (01:28):
Hi. My name is Gloria Chansook Kim. I
am a scholar of visual culture,media studies, and science and
technology studies. So my workgenerally works across histories
and theories of vision,computation and culture, and the
environmental humanities, andinfrastructure studies. I'm the
(01:48):
author of Microbial Resolution,Visualization, and Security in
the, War Against EmergingMicrobes.
I'm Assistant Professor in theDepartment of Media and Cultural
Studies at the University ofCalifornia, Riverside.
Amber Benezra (02:04):
All three of our books were writing from
different field perspectives,anthropology, media and cultural
studies, history, science andtechnology studies, and we all
have different takes on what isat stake in studying the
microbial. I'm really interestedto hear how you both came to
microbes as your subject ofstudy. What you like and what
you hate about studyingmicrobes, Amy, and if you'll
(02:25):
continue to explore microbes inyour work or your future work.
Gloria Chan-Sook Kim (02:29):
I can take the reins on that first. Thanks
for that question, Amber. Yeah.How did I come to work on
microbes? So before I startedwriting and researching and
writing this book, I wasthinking around questions around
biology, biopolitics, and, theepistemological systems systems
that work around that and frameknowledge about that.
(02:52):
And then I saw an IBMcommercial. I actually
encountered it while reading theNew York Times online. There was
a kind of, flashing banner witha red silhouetted chicken. So I
clicked on it for some reason,and then this video ad popped
up. That ad is the object that Ianalyzed in chapter one.
(03:12):
It's this, kinda shortdocumentary called Deadly
Migration, a documentary aboutthe future avian flu pandemic
that will come to kill us alland, how we can use computation
and informatics to manage thatrisk. So when I saw that, a
bunch of buttons, all of mybuttons were being hit at once.
(03:35):
Biology, biopolitics, but it wasalso intersecting with, the
informational turn. It was,really intriguing to me the way
that this was coming togetherwith this commercial that's
actually part of this larger IBMSmart Planet campaign. And it
involved global infrastructuresand all of the stuff about
(03:56):
futures that I was reallyinterested in.
I started learning about justlooking at how we were talking
about this future pandemic andabout avian flu in particular. I
started to become interested inthis concept of emerging
microbes. This particularconcept emerging microbes
pointed to this idea that, youknow, we're not talking now
(04:17):
about microbes that exist herein the present that we know are
around us, but it kind of recastthese questions I had been
thinking about for a really longtime to this hypothetical future
space. Right? So this idea thatthey're emerging, they're
constantly emerging.
We don't know when, we don'tknow how, but we know that.
Amber Benezra (04:36):
Thanks. That's great.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer (04:38):
I think I'm a really ambivalent microbe
scholar in a way. This book ismaybe kind of accidentally about
microbes. It started because Iwas really interested in the
controversies around fecalmicrobial transplants. Because
of my proximity to theUniversity of Minnesota Medical
School for a while, I was awareof people there who were kind of
(04:59):
at the forefront ofexperimenting with fecal
microbial transplants, and so Iwas just like paying attention
to what was going on. But it wasmostly the fecal side of the
transplant that I was interestedin.
This book is the third bookwhere I'm really trying to work
through this umbrellatheoretical concept the biology
(05:19):
of everyday life. It's like aclass that I teach. It's like a
research agenda, I suppose. Andfor a really long time, I was
having a hard time finding goodresearch on the kind of social
study of human shit. We had,like, a week in the biology of
everyday life class that wassupposed to be the defecation
week, and there were, like,three things that we could read.
(05:42):
And so I was, like, there's hasgot to be an emergent
scholarship in human shit. Andwhen the fecal microbial
transplant debates started, Iwas like, oh, maybe this is it.
Like, maybe we're gonna finallytip over and there's gonna be a
golden age of shit studies orsomething. That has not
happened. Although, I mean,maybe maybe we're in the kind
of, like, silver age of shitstudies because there's more and
(06:05):
more people who are working onkind of related things.
But it's really my interest inthe body and discourses of the
biological, and, the microbialkind of gets caught up in all of
that stuff. And really, I mean Iwrote the book in the weirdest
circumstances in the middle ofthe early part of the pandemic,
(06:26):
and then I was in Finland reallywondering why I had written the
book. Like, who was this for?Because I didn't know very many
people other than Amber andJamie Lorimer who were, like,
interested in microbes. And thenI bumped into a whole bunch of
people in Finland through theCenter for the Social Study of
Microbes led by Salazariola, andthey were, like, the audience
(06:50):
for the book.
And I was like, wait a minute.Like, there's a bunch of people
that are really into this, andthere's, like, a conversation
that's being had and, you know,it's just not where I'm at. And
so all of a sudden, it was,like, 2021. I was, like, I think
I need to revise this book inorder to engage with all of
these other people who areactually interested in microbes,
(07:10):
and I was not. Like, it was justlike there are these microbes in
the story, but they're notcentral to it.
But it ended up being reallyfortuitous because, like, in the
latter part of the book, Ireally try and think about the
body as a landscape and the waythat as an object and as a
phenomenological experience,thinking about how bodies are
(07:32):
laminated together into theirshared spaces as kind of these
landscapes that intersect withone another is a way to bring
together thinking about themicrobial stuff with all of the
human body stuff in ways thatweren't just about, like,
there's microbes out there, andthen there's human bodies here,
and we interact in weird ways.It's like we're just deeply
(07:53):
imbricated into one another'slives, and we need to think
about that. It was reallyclarifying for me to, like,
wrestle with microbes bothconceptually, but then also,
like, what they're actuallydoing to human bodies. But what
about you, Amber? Tell us aboutyour life with microbes.
Amber Benezra (08:09):
Well, I will just rest assured, my book talks
about shit a lot. So that is,you know, I'm on that train with
you. Absolutely. It'sunavoidable when you're talking
about gut microbes. Right?
But I also had the sameexperience because there is a
huge Scandinavian there's, like,people in Sweden, people in
Iceland, people in in Finlandwho are really deeply concerned
(08:31):
with microbe social scientists.And it is a you're right. It's
not something that we we havehere in The US. It's very
different. My story is kind ofpretty basic.
I was a graduate student. I wasdeveloping a dissertation
project about I was reallyinterested in biobanks and
genetic relatedness as we arecoming to understand it and,
(08:53):
like, you know, deep historiesof ideas of kinship and
anthropology. I was actuallyreally interested in Mormons
and, like, archival genealogiesand how genetic testing is
changing that kind of recordkeeping. The point is I was in a
class called anthropology ofscience, taught by Emily Martin
at NYU. One day after class, shejust was like, you should look
(09:15):
into the Human MicrobiomeProject.
This was 02/2009, so it was theyear that that project started.
She was like, you should lookinto this human microbiome
project. I think you wouldreally be interested in it, and
it would be really right up youralley. And I was like, okay. And
then I just started looking intothat.
You know, it was an NIH fundedproject trying to determine what
the most healthy what's ahealthy human microbiome. Right?
(09:36):
That project failed, and theywere like, we can't figure that
out. It's not the same foreveryone, obviously. But, yeah,
I just sort of naively started,emailing all the PIs on that
project, and Jeff Gordon wroteme back.
Actually, he called me on thephone, and the rest is sort of
history, but it was so I feellike I just fell head first into
my groves very unintentionally.I am curious to hear if if
(09:58):
there's anything you hate aboutworking on microbes and if it's
something you'll continue. I'vebeen thinking a lot recently
about my future work, and I feelso tied to microbes. But then
I'm like, maybe I'll just choosesomething completely different.
Gloria Chan-Sook Kim (10:12):
I feel really sorely left out here that
I don't write more about poop,because if you know anything
about me, which I don't expectyou any of you to, I I'm
fascinated by poop, and I ifthere's something called
defecation week, I'll be there.I I think it's really
(10:33):
interesting the ways that we'retalking about microbes as I also
got into microbes accidentally.You know, it was a way for me to
talk about making futuresoperable and making planets
operable and systems operable.And, moreover, to this point
about what we love or hate aboutworking with microbes, because
(10:55):
I'm I use microbes in a way tothink about futures and, you
know, scales of the planet andthe body and forms of knowledge
and knowledge making. What Ilove about working with microbes
is that, it becomes this objectwhere we can start thinking
about all of these things.
So when I'm thinking aboutemergence, that kind of quality
of microbes that I'm dealingwith, you know, it is this
(11:17):
really interestingepistemological problem of,
right, so we're gonna build awar against emerging microbes,
right, so then how do you dothat, right, how do you make war
against something that is notonly not yet here but whose
futures are radicallyindeterminate, right? So what
does that look like? So itbecomes this really rich way of
(11:39):
thinking about futures and howthey can be made operational.
And then microbes kind of leadme to think about a a range of
questions, including, you know,how are we gonna think about
life and habitability or evenwhat it means and feels like to
be together on this planet inthe future. So those are things
(12:01):
that I love about working withmicrobes.
One thing that's been a realchallenge, because I work with
contemporary pandemiclandscapes, is things are
happening all the time and itsometimes feels like you're
trying to trace a moving object.So that's been a real challenge.
What about you, Matthew?
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer (12:19):
I don't think I have any purposeful
plans to spend more time withmicrobes as a research object.
But I I say that with somereservations because I think
that one of the things that thisrecent experience has done for
me is it's, like, opened up aregister in a way where it's,
like, now in anything that Ithink about, the question is
what's the microbial's role inwhatever this thing is? I think
(12:44):
it's about seeing the microbialor, like, taking it into
consideration in a way andrecognizing that alongside with
all of these other features inour, like, social and
environmental worlds that weinhabit that, like, the
microbial is something thatneeds to be paid attention to.
That doesn't necessarily meanthat it's, like, a main
character in the story for me,but that it is a character or
(13:06):
set of characters in the storyand making sure that whatever
I'm thinking about makes roomfor the microbial to insist on
its presence seems reallyimportant. I have a hard time
staying put with an object, sothe prospect that I would spend
more time with microbes in adirect way is always it's like
the kind of thing that I refuseto do, but it's like they're
(13:28):
companions and recognizing thatcompanionship in a kind of
scholarly sense seems reallyimportant.
This is a collective thing.Right? That, like, what we're
doing is trying to drawattention to all of these other
features of our worlds and thathopefully what we're doing is
making it an additive projectfor everybody. Right? That it's
not just for us as individualresearchers, but other people
(13:49):
too.
Amber Benezra (13:51):
I agree with you. Absolutely. And I think that's
what I would answer is my reasonfor loving microbiome or
microbes is that the microbiomeis such a biosocial object. It's
an inroad with scientists orbiological scientists in a way
that the environmental impact ofgetting cancer or not can be
debatable. It's hard to tracethose things back to a cause.
(14:13):
When you're talking aboutmicrobiome, you can't leave out
environmental factors. Right?Things like nutrition,
geography, like, all the thingsthat go into informing what
microbial populations we haveare essentially social and
intimate in all these things. Soas a person who wants to work
with scientists, it's like anace up my sleeve that I'm like,
but you have to pay attention tothe social in these these
(14:35):
circumstances. But I think likeyou're saying, Matthew, also, we
all as humans have to payattention to the micro real,
whether we want to or not.
All the time, the scientists Iwork with were like, the
microbes world, we just live init, which I think is really
true.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer (14:50):
So the question that I have for the
three of us is kind of meplaying devil's advocate. I'm
wondering if, focusing onmicrobes from the humanities and
social sciences is kind offrivolous in a way. What are the
politics of focusing on themicrobial instead of something
that might be widely accepted asmore pressing? I see both of
(15:11):
your books as being, like,deeply political in their
commitments, but I wonder howyou, like, talk about those
politics when you're talkingabout your projects to other
people.
Amber Benezra (15:22):
I think both of our both Glorian and my books
address objects in human health,so it immediately gives it some
kind of value to other peoplebecause of that sort of
translational aspect of it. ButI it is I I talk about this in
my book a little bit that I havebeen accused by other
anthropologists as not havinghuman cultural lives at the
(15:43):
center of my work. The stakeswhen you're talking about
microbial worlds, they moreabstracted, but especially like
in light of recent politicalsituations and election outcomes
in this country, I'm I've beenasking myself what academia
matters at all. Right? Like, ifthe world has gone to to
garbage, like, what are we doingwith ourselves?
(16:06):
My central focus always is howto bring the biological and
social sciences together. And,again, like, I feel like
microbiome work is the way to dothis, and I desperately want
science to be better than it is.Right? To be more equitable, to
be doing better work, to drawall the things you talk about in
your book, Matthew, about justthe persistence of white
(16:28):
supremacy. And I think, Gloria,you addressed this too, the idea
of bioeconomies that aren'tconcerned necessarily with
fairness or equity or who is thefocus of these kinds of things.
I want science to be better. Iwanna be trying to be a part of
how to do that. And so for me,that's why microbiome work seems
(16:49):
like the stakes are high. Like,there seems like there is a lot
to be done here that is valuableand not frivolous. And also
because I do believe that thereis a lot at stake for humans if
we don't get our shit togetherfiguring out about how to live
with microbes, what, you know,or what they're doing or what
our relationships are with them.
A sort of a global outcomeclimate environment, our health,
(17:12):
the health of our planet. Ithink there is some urgency to
that. To me, it doesn't feelfrivolous, but I definitely see
that framing and how it lookslike that and how I often have
to explain myself to othersocial scientists in terms of
the significances of this work.
Gloria Chan-Sook Kim (17:29):
I think my experience working with microbes
in the humanities has been alittle bit different, you know,
to this question of itsfrivolity. I hadn't really,
fortunately, been challenged onthat front, and I so I think I'm
pushing back a bit on thepremise of that question because
I think the microbial is widelyconsidered to be a pressing
(17:49):
topic right now, and that seemsto be the case for me both in
and, outside of the humanitiesand social sciences, but also in
and outside of academia. This isespecially so right now after
we've just I I I don't wanna saycome out of a long pandemic, but
we're living under this kind oflong kind of unending shadow of
(18:10):
whatever that was. And we areliving amid these landscapes of
all sorts of food crises of ecoli and salmonella outbreaks
that are a consequence the waythe world is now put together.
You know, it also comes up withthis particular kind of
salience, as Amber, you pointedout with the recent elections
(18:32):
and the nomination of a newsecretary of health who is
against universal vaccination.
So now many people are worriedabout what that will look like.
I also think that just climatecatastrophe is hurdling all
sorts of kind of microbes at usand, you know, like you, Amber,
we have no choice but to dealwith them. So to me, the
(18:53):
microbial seems very much at theforefront of a lot of
discussions happening in variousareas across academia and not,
but then also in, you know,let's say also in government and
policy, but also, like, expertsand just kind of everyday people
thinking about how to kinda geton with living. I think that
when the humanities and socialsciences take up the microbe as
(19:17):
we do in our three books, themicrobe kind of comes up as this
key element that mediatesbetween all of these registers,
between politics and culture,and moves between all of these
kinds of relations of social,scalar, bodily, and ontological
difference. When we think aboutit in the humanities and social
(19:39):
sciences, it seems to registerbroader ways of thinking about
living and survival and howwe're gonna do that.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer (19:48):
Yeah. I mean, I think about it a lot
from the perspective ofAmericans have been pretty well
protected from things likechronic dysentery.
Gloria Chan-Sook Kim (19:57):
Mhmm.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer (19:58):
And with changing regulations around
pollution and water cleanlinesslevels and stuff like that, we
might not be quite as protectedfrom that stuff in the near
future.
Gloria Chan-Sook Kim (20:09):
Yeah.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer (20:10):
And, I mean, I sometimes think that,
like and this is especially truein, like, medical anthropology
and medical sociology, that whatwe focus on in the discipline
overrepresents things that haveminimal impact on global
populations, which is not tominimize those conditions like
HIV AIDS, the number of peoplewho focus on that, and the
(20:32):
number of people who arediagnosed with HIV AIDS these
days is a smaller and smallernumber despite its enormous
prevalence in our field. Butwhen you think about the impacts
that microbes have on people'senduring health, that's pretty
much everybody. Right? And theway that we don't center
conversations like that seemlike real detriments to what
(20:55):
we're doing as a scientist andpeople in the humanities. Right?
I'm glad that both of you feellike it's maybe more central in
some ways than I sometimesperceive it to be. I think my
experience has often been that Ifeel like I'm talking about
things that other people thinkare fringe topics. Like, my
first book was about sleep andsleep disorders, and that people
(21:18):
didn't immediately think, like,oh, right. We should all be
working on sleep because, like,that's a problem that everybody
has, was really confounding tome. Like, there's, like, no
anthropology of sleep before02/2002.
Like, what's happening if we'reignoring these things that are
such important aspects in oureveryday lives, but also just
(21:39):
our livelihood? So I mean, Ikinda think it's intensely
political to think about thisstuff, and we'll probably be
revealed to be even morepolitical as we move forward
over the next few years becausewe'll see, like, what happens
when you take away all of theprotections that we have to,
keep us safe from microbes.Like, if we're gonna stop
(22:00):
pasteurizing milk, that's gonnabe a real doozy.
Gloria Chan-Sook Kim (22:04):
Yeah. Okay. So, I want to turn to talk
about the material of microbes,particularly the material
semiotics. So across our threebooks, we each are dealing with
microbes as is really, kind ofalmost endlessly mutable
entities. Like, they can bebrought from one place to the
(22:25):
other.
They can be transmuted from thisform to the lab, to this, to
that. This happens not onlybecause microbes are put through
various processes in theexperiments and scientific
projects that we're eachcharting out. So, you know, for
instance, Matthew, the making offecal transplant matter or
things like fermentation andpickle juice or shotgun
(22:46):
sequencing or, the presence orabsence of nutrition for you,
Amber, or in me, it's theinsertion of gene segments into
plasmid rings to reanimate oldviruses or, you know, the
speculative imaging technologiesthat are supposed to bring these
things into view. These arescientific processes, but
they're not only that. As thesethings are happening, they're
(23:09):
also moments that change thekind of material semiotics, the
material context in whichmicrobes are placed.
So, you know, whether it'splaced in the computational
space or in a vaginal space orin a fecal space, I'm interested
in the ways that that thenalters what microbes come to
mean. I'd be really interestedin talking about the material
(23:31):
semiotics of microbes and, youknow, how did the changing
material context in whichmicrobes were placed alter what
they meant and how they gettaken up, or how they don't get
taken up in the social realm?
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer (23:47):
I mean, I think the example that most
immediately comes to mind for meis really about fecal microbial
transplants. When people arethinking through whether or not
they're willing to put somebodyelse's microbes into their body,
they become different kinds ofthings. Your microbes are fine
(24:08):
in your body. Whatever is goingon over there is, like, just
fine for most people, but theprospect of using them
therapeutically for illnesses inyour body suddenly raises all
these questions. That's reallyat the heart of the
controversies around fecalmicrobial transplants or at
(24:29):
least that's the argument that Imake in the book that, like,
people can kind of think aboutmicrobes in the abstract and be
okay with them.
And I mean people at the Foodand Drug Administration and the
Center for Disease Control andNational Institutes of Health.
Like, the abstract idea ofmicrobes is just fine for most
people. When you start to thinkabout the actual practice of
(24:53):
taking donor feces and puttingit through a distillation
process and then using it as atherapeutic for a patient, like,
that troubles a lot of people,and they have a hard time really
naming why it's so troubling tothem. That's one of the things I
wrestle with in the book is,like, why are we so troubled by
the biological as a therapeutic?Really, that's, like, the
(25:15):
narrative arc of the book.
Like, why is the biologicaldangerous when something like
the pharmaceutical seems to bejust safe for most people? And
when you think about those twothings in parallel, like, most
people are just fine with mostpharmaceutical chemicals all the
time. Like, wherever they are,they're like a benevolent
(25:36):
therapeutic. But when you thinkabout biological material, it's
okay over there, but it's notokay if you're gonna put it into
my body. Working through thatcentral problem was really the
the key for me in thinkingthrough exactly the material
semiotics of microbes.
Like, what how do you deal withthe inherent meanings that
(25:58):
become associated with themicrobial, and can you untangle
them in order to make themtherapeutic, in an unproblematic
way? I think I'm ultimately kindof pessimistic about it because
I really see racism as being oneof those central semiotic
valences that get applied tomicrobes. And so we we kind of
(26:21):
can't purify them. We can washthem. And any attempt to create
a pharmaceutical microbe in thesense that you're creating it in
a lab doesn't seem to work inthe way that we need it to work.
And so as long as microbes carrythe semiotic weight that they do
as kinda cultural objects,they'll never really achieve the
(26:44):
full potency of their, like,therapeutic potential.
Gloria Chan-Sook Kim (26:48):
I I think that's a fascinating response.
I'm wondering about the fecalmatter of microbes. I mean, that
is a pretty potent materialsemiotic. Right? And so, you
know, I'm thinking about thevarious ways that it has to be
treated in order to kind ofreach therapeutic status in your
book.
I mean, I'm I'm trying to thinkthrough the materiality of poo
(27:09):
here. There's something aboutthe way that, shit is made in
the body that seems to indexeverything about one's body, a
very particular person. And thento have to replace those
pathogens or those microbes inanother person, there's
something so difficult aboutthat.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer (27:27):
I was just gonna agree. I mean, I
think it's so complicated. Shitis such a terrible symbol in a
way, and the reality of tryingto deal with it is always caught
up in all of this baggage.Right? And one of the things
that I have been reallyinterested in, like, as a
parent, but also someone whoreads a lot of parenting guides
(27:48):
as critical objects.
You know, one of the firstthings that happened to me as a
parent is all of the weird hangups I might have had about human
waste just had to be washed awaybecause, like, I have to deal
with a poopy kid. And, like,when you have to deal with other
people's shit, it just becomes adifferent kind of thing. It
enters a different semioticspace. And I had a uncle who was
(28:10):
a janitor for most of hiscareer, and he would always,
like, chide us for not cleaningthe toilets at my grandmother's
house. He was like, just put ona glove and scrub it.
You know, it's like just shit.As a 13 year old, I was like,
what is he talking about? Like,that's mortifying. But, like, as
a parent, I totally get it. Andit's so weird to me.
Right? It's it's weird that,like, you can have all of these
(28:33):
parents who are doctors or FDApolicymakers, and they can't
inhabit that parenting spacewhere it's like, well, it's just
shit for the most part. Right?And their role as medical
experts do. Right?
That they succumb to all of thedisgust that is associated with
biological materials, and theyjust can't extricate themselves
(28:53):
from it.
Gloria Chan-Sook Kim (28:55):
As I was reading your book, I was
thinking about how some parentsrelate to their infants' shit.
For me, it's how I relate to mydog's shit. So that's another
material semiotic that surfacesfor me in this work where it's
about the the body that it comesfrom and the intimacy and
proximity that one has withthat. I think that's
(29:15):
fascinating. And and I thinkthat just the way that fetal
transplants work, like, wherethey have to enter the body of
the recipient seems to kind ofcancel some kind of fundamental
grammar of the body that we havecome to accept.
And I'm I'm really eager to hearfrom you. You're bringing to
mind the ways that you'retalking about race and microbes.
(29:36):
And I was thinking, so microbesare this thing that carry all of
it's so hard to wash whateverracializations around it accrue.
You know, I'm thinking of theHeLa cell by contrast. So what's
the difference?
This isn't a question for you,but something for me to think
about. What is the differencebetween a cell and a microbe?
(29:56):
They seem to be different kindsof objects circulating in these
ways and able to attach anddetach from concepts.
Amber Benezra (30:03):
It's funny because just this week I taught
my students an introduction toscience and technology studies
about material semiotics. Theseare, you know, mostly
engineering students. I'm tryingto get them to understand this.
I was like, do you know whatsemiotics is? Here's a history
of this whole field in fiveseconds.
There's simultaneously always arelationship between things and
between concepts. And you can'ttake those things apart. I'm
(30:26):
like, that's my one second, youknow, definition of material
semiotics. So it's justinteresting that you're bringing
this question to us today. Iwanted to respond to Matthew's
comment just because I wasthinking about, when you were
saying your biology is fine overthere.
Right? It made me think of thisSeinfeld joke once where he was
like, you know, other people'shair were like, we love all of
(30:48):
we run our fingers through it,we like will kiss someone's head
with their hair, but their onesingle hair in our food is like,
get out of here, like this isunbearable disgust. Right? In
questions actually that I hadthought of for both of you it
sort of encompassed in all ofthis is that it's like having
microbes or biology out ofplace. The same goes for like a
(31:10):
vaginal seeding right?
Right? So there's a lot in thevaginal microbiome that's really
valuable to vaginal birth andyou know that's when kids become
inoculated with all of thesemicrobes when they're born and
so if babies are born by csection they get skin microbes
instead, right? So that's awhole thing. So there are a
bunch of scientists I knowwanted to do experiments where
they a mother was giving birthby c section. They wanted to
(31:32):
just take her vaginal microbesand swab the baby's face or
mouth with it.
And hospitals were like nofucking way. They're like no No
IRB is gonna give you approval.And, you know, the PI's are
like, but these are the microbeskids would get if they were
going through the vaginal canalof their own mother. And
hospitals were like, absolutelynot. Can you do that right?
(31:53):
So it's like this biology out ofplace idea that is very that I
think there is discussed andsome sort of disturbance that
comes up for us. The scientistsI work with somehow take these
so they were working with fecalsamples that arrive in like just
big tubes of shit, and they haveto pulverize them and they do
that while the shit is frozenand they do it as fast as they
(32:16):
can so that it doesn't becomemore shit like, right? Like they
do not wanna remember what itis. And I think that they have
devised this method to distancethemselves from that biology out
of place because they just startextracting RNA, right? They're
continuously purifying thesample.
It becomes less and less likeshit, right, they're taking out
the microbial genomes. And so, Iit's some kind of altering of
(32:39):
the material part of thematerial semiotic to make it
more palatable, to make itsomehow more a scientific
object. And I'm just thinking ofall this stuff for the first
time as we're talking about it,which is just really
interesting. And I think myquestion to you is gonna be,
Matthew, like, you know, youtalk about unsettling disgust
and I'm wondering if thescientists themselves need
(32:59):
because they were verydisconnected from where the
samples were coming from, right,in urban Bangladesh, right, and
those bodies and there's exactlywhat you're talking about so
much race and ethnicity andclass and nationhood and all
kinds of things wrapped up inthose samples. Because when
scientists can just see thesamples as microbes and not
people, it's also somehow safer.
So then microbes can stand infor people in a more safe way
(33:23):
which is also problematic. So Iwonder like is the discuss
necessary? Right when they'repulverizing actual shit, they
have to remember it came from ahuman butthole. Like, they when
they're just sequencing, youknow, microbial genes, they
don't have to think about thatat all. And maybe that's a
problem with science.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer (33:43):
Yeah. I mean, I I don't know. I mean,
I'm a big proponent of theexperience of disgust. Right? I
mean, I think that that's one ofthe things I really came around
to in working on the book wasour lives are too devoid of
disgust in a weird way.
It's like we're disgusted by thewrong things in some sense. We
need to reinject theopportunities for us to be
(34:04):
disgusted around the right kindsof things. Right? Because when
we're disgusted, it kind ofhelps us think about the
parameters of what's okay andwhat's not okay and why certain
things are not okay. Then that'san opportunity to work through
that disgust.
I mean I tell people that thatbook is like a love letter to
Mary Douglas and Julia Kristeva,which I think it is. Yeah I mean
(34:24):
I I stand by it, but like theyyou know were really critical in
helping me think about like whywe don't experience disgust or
why we don't want to experiencedisgust. And I work with
students all the time on tryingto get them to discuss
themselves within parametersthat they feel okay with. In
that biology of everyday lifeclass, I have them do these
(34:45):
experiments where they have to,like, write auto ethnographies
about physiological processes,and they have to create rules
to, like, eat differently. So,like, students will eat without
using utensils for a week andcome into contact with their
food in ways that they never do.
And they often narrate that,like, in the beginning, it's
kinda disgusting, but thenthey're kind of okay with it.
(35:07):
And, like, where does thedisgust go? And thinking about
that is really helpful. Like,where does it go? Like, it it
can disappear almostimmediately.
Right? When you think aboutthose scientists, like, breaking
up those poop icicles, it's likeyou kind of want them to have
that experience of disgust. Youlike I take it from what you
were your book that like youkind of want them to remember
(35:30):
and not be able to work asquickly as they do in order to
like remember that there'speople. And that maybe in the
remembrance of those people ithelps them unsettle some of the
assumptions that are baked intowhat they're about to do with
that RNA sequencing. I don'tknow, I'm a big proponent of
being grossed out.
Gloria Chan-Sook Kim (35:50):
I love that. I love being grossed out.
I think it's a beautiful,liminal experience, and I I have
to admit my thresholds ofdisgust are pretty wide. But,
you know, I'm thinking aboutthat frozen about the poopsicles
in your book, Amber, and I wasfascinated by that because I was
(36:11):
understanding that as yetanother biomedical kind of I
guess we can kinda loosely callit a biomedical intervention,
but this kind of strategy tochange the material semiotics
around feces by changing itsstates, right? So there's some
really amazing writing aboutrefrigeration and cold storage
and freezing by Joanna Radinthat would shine some beautiful
(36:32):
light on poopsicles.
But as we're talking about thisstuff and these kind of changing
states of microbes and how,Amber, you wish that scientists
would deal with the real kind ofmelted mess of shit because it
helps them to remember wherethese come from and what what
they're attached to. It makes methink about a different kind of
material semiotics in my bookwhere now I'm just really sad
(36:54):
that I don't write about poo. Inthe last, couple chapters of my
book, I talk about this kind of,yeah, Silicon Valley led effort
to create an atlas of all themicrobes in the world. And this
atlas is this, speculativeendeavor. It's tied to this
total Silicon Valley dream ofmaking the world into this kind
(37:16):
of vast platform ofbioinformational sharing and
pushing and surveillance.
Part of that dream comes fromthis one scientist entrepreneur
who became interested inemerging microbes and who had
this idea of creating this kindof global atlas of all microbes
and one that will be constantlyupdated because they're always
(37:38):
emerging. So this scientistentrepreneur became interested
in emerging microbes when henoticed, so he was working in
Cameron at the time, and henoticed that there were a lot of
hunters hunting for meat injungles. And in taking note of
the close bodily contact betweenthese hunters and the animals
(37:58):
that they would hunt, Hethought, you know, this is a
great way to, you know, kind ofanticipate how viruses will
spill over from humans to fromanimals into humans and create
these pandemics of the future.The whole thing is this
infrastructure, this system tomove viruses found in animals
through all sorts of materialtransformations. So it's in the
(38:19):
animal body, then you sample theblood of the animal and the
person who hunted them and thenpeople around them, and then
that stuff gets transformed intobioinformational stuff that can
be kinda stored on a database.
And then the ways that thatmoves from an extremely
racialized, deeply colonial kindof practice into this kind of
(38:40):
abstract realm of computation,is an interesting kind of
transformation for me becauseone of the things that people
often think of when they thinkabout data and this kind of
computational space, there areno bodies in it. It seems to be
free of many of those frictions.But, yeah, like you, Amber, I
wish that there were I mean,there are ways in which these
(39:01):
concepts remain attached in thatkind of bioinformational space,
but I wish those abstractionswere not as as easy or or clean.
Amber Benezra (39:10):
I think what you're saying is very tied to
the theme of your book. The datais the way of seeing now. I
mean, for sure in humanmicrobiome, no one uses
microscopes. Absolutely not.Right?
They're only looking atmicrobial genomics. So the way
you see what microbe species arethere is by looking at what
genes are there. These ways ofseeing it are so abstracted that
(39:32):
there's almost no material tothe material anymore. Right? So
I think I mean, this is actuallythe question I was going to ask
you, which is that, I mean, forall of us, is there a a real
material functioning in life ofmicrobes outside of human
surveillance?
I mean, what are we know thatsometimes we can see them in
under microscopes. We know whenwe get sick. We think of the
(39:53):
presence of pathogens as makingus ill. We can sequence their
genomes, but the whole thingabout microbes is that you can
only like, we can only see themthrough science. And I know
there are other people workingon things like shamanistic
histories, you know, of peopleknowing the presence of
microbes, but knowing and seeingare very tenuous Mhmm.
(40:14):
There. Right?
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer (40:15):
Yeah. I I was thinking about a pitch for
an old project while while I wasreading Gloria's book. Gloria
does such a good job of thinkingabout the high-tech resolution
of the microbial, right, and howit is entering into all of
these, like, spheres ofconsumption for us. Right? That
we're, like, confronted withimages of microbes in ways that
we hadn't been twenty years agofor sure.
(40:37):
Right? A while ago, I waspitching this idea that should
have people wear entirely whiteoutfits with, like, white gloves
and spend a day in all sorts ofdifferent contexts to show how
dirty they get and then displaythose suits. Right? So, like,
have people ride the subway inNew York City, have people walk
(40:58):
along streetsides in suburbanNew Jersey, have someone wear
that same suit in aslaughterhouse, like, all those
kinds of places to really tryand, like, surface all of these
microbial interactions thatpeople have, but we don't really
account for them. Right?
And that was, like, a pitch thatI made before the pandemic. And
then during the pandemic, Ireally became like, I've always
(41:19):
been a handwashing advocate, butall the pandemic made me like a
proselytizer around handwashing.Like, I'm always troubled going
to men's restrooms because thenumber of men who don't wash
their hands after they use theurinal where the toilet is
constantly confounding, and Idon't know what to do about
that. But it was like thismoment where, like, you can see,
(41:40):
or, like, I'm starting to seethe microbes. Right?
What we're all struggling withis, like, how do you re embody
the microbial If the tensionthat we're facing in so much
stuff is its disembodiment,right, through its abstraction,
what are the ways that we cankind of put it back into place
or, like, surface it in oureveryday lives in ways that are
safe, that aren't about E. Colioutbreaks, but instead about,
(42:04):
like, what are the microbialinteractions that you're having
in your refrigerator thismorning, and how are you
changing those microbialinteractions by cooking or
otherwise preparing whatever itis that you're about to eat, and
what's happening when you're inthe shower. And so creating
those kinds of ways to see andinteract with the microbial
seems like a really importantnext step in thinking about how
(42:26):
do we resist the, like, pureabstraction of these forces in
our everyday lives.
Gloria Chan-Sook Kim (42:31):
Yeah. For me, that question of
materialization, I feel it alittle differently because the
thing in microbial resolutionthat I'm dealing with is this
problematic project to turn thisthing that exists in a state of
pure possibility. Right? Justlike the next thing. Right?
(42:52):
It doesn't matter if, you know,we already we're still or just
in the long tail end or whateverthis is in a pandemic. We're
still looking to the next thing.That emphasis on emergence and
trying to materialize that,that's the kind of crux of the
question of materiality in mybook. Yeah. You're prompted to
think about this in terms ofmaterialism as a rich one for
(43:13):
me.
So one question that I keptturning around in my head, you
know, what is the materialstatus of an emerging microbe?
What does it mean to, you know,if emergence signals this realm
of unknowable or non knowablekind of open possibility, then
how, in the war on emergingmicrobes does that kind of
(43:36):
amorphousness and that nonknowledge or that non knowable
quality become transfigured intosomething that can be governed
or governed through. And so,like, crucially for me, what
that means is that when emergingmicrobes are materialized, what
is materialized is this kind of,you know, they have to be
materialized with, this nonknowledge and this kind of
(43:57):
amorphousness intact. So thething that is materialized is
not like, yes. I know it's here.
The thing that has to come intobeing and, come into form as a
kind of governable object isthis amorphous moving target. So
for me, it's hard to think outof a kind of surveillance
structure because the war onemerging microbes is this whole
(44:18):
project to secure by scanningthe entire planet, and how to
make that operable. But, youknow, Stephanie Fischel in the
microbial state has some reallygreat work that works through a
new materialism to think througha new kind of global politics of
thriving through the kind ofmaterial realities of microbes.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer (44:37):
So I I'm thinking about thriving too,
Gloria, that, like, one of thethings that we're all wrestling
with is really the ambivalentrule of microbial knowledge in
some way. Right? That it'simportant to know about
microbes, but then what do youdo with that knowledge? There's,
like, dangers associated withmicrobial knowledge and in terms
(44:59):
of, like, their weaponization.And there are real benefits to
it too.
Right? That being able to testfor certain kinds of
environmental dangers is reallyimportant. But, like, I end my
book with, like, realirresolution, it feels like we
keep kind of taking microbesseriously in medicine and global
(45:20):
public health, and then we turnaway from it. And, like, there's
this turn to and away frommicrobes over and over again.
And when we kinda get lazy aboutit, then we remember that we
have to pay attention tomicrobes because they're kind of
a problem.
But there doesn't seem to be alot of financial incentives for
pharmaceutical companies toactually do something proactive
(45:42):
about microbes outside of, like,surveillance medicine in some
respects. So I wonder if youboth could help me think about,
do microbes offer us some kindof post capitalist opportunity
or some kind of anti colonialopportunity? What is, like, the
possibility of the microbe thatwe want to embrace in thinking
(46:05):
about, like, our collectivefutures?
Amber Benezra (46:08):
I mean this is what I'm thinking about in terms
of my next step, my nextresearch with microbes and in
the last couple of years I'vewritten a lot about race in the
microbiome and how race keepsgetting reified in in human
microbiome studies but alsowe're at a moment where you know
microbiome science is very new.It is only fifteen years old.
(46:31):
And there is an opportunity,there's an opening here and I
think this is just my book cameout last year, I gave 14 talks
last year. More than half ofthem were two microbiology
departments that invited me tocome speak. So that I feel like
is there's a lot of promisethere And I often gave the this
race talk to them about howusing race as a proxy as a
(46:54):
population descriptor whenyou're looking at, you know,
microbes because it it keepscoming up in like many studies.
People of this race have thesemicrobes in their gut or people
of this race have these microbesin their vaginas, right? So that
we just this keeps like beingreplicated all these medical
racism and I've been able totalk to these scientists about
making their science betterwhich is really the key way to
(47:17):
get in with scientists is likeconvince them it's valuable to
them and saying your data willbe more exact if you're looking
at environmental toxins, diet,all the other things that
actually shape your microbiomeand not just using race as kind
of a sloppy lazy proxy fordescribing populations of
people. I feel like there's apossibility there to make a
(47:40):
change in these legacies ofracializing. There's a little
bit of momentum and enough otherand junior scientists working on
this who care about making thesechanges where we can kind of get
in on the ground floor to belike, okay. And you know,
there's a whole other side.
All the malnutrition stuff thatI was working on that is is in
the book is very much focused oncreating a saleable probiotic
(48:04):
that's going to fix a brokenmicrobiome. Right? And so that's
kind of the the other spec endof the spectrum of what you're
talking about. Thecommercialization of microbiome
treatments or microbiome derivedfoods or all these kinds of
therapies is extremelycapitalist. Right?
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer (48:20):
What I was thinking about in your
discussion of ghosting race inthe book, maybe it's an
opportunity to get people tothink with different kinds of
variables instead of race. Theway that race keeps creeping
back into science and medicineis so flummoxing, and it's like
they just don't have theconceptual tools to stop
(48:43):
thinking about race. And, youknow, maybe this is one way to
build an anti racist science andmedicine that's like, we need to
focus on these variables, notthose variables that aren't
real.
Gloria Chan-Sook Kim (48:58):
My response is a little more and
and the things that I hope I canoffer are much more modest. Of
course, we all hope for a farmore just future, and I can't
speak to what alternatives wouldbe except in terms of, for me,
kind of speculative hopefulterm. In the work that I do, I'm
(49:19):
interested in understanding thiscultural register. We have this
war, on emerging microbes. It'spremised on this irresolvable
tension.
We have to secure thisunsecurable thing called
emergence. A world kind of getsbuilt through that dynamic. How
do kind of economic systems,infrastructures, and policy get
(49:42):
built upon this irresolvablekind of crops? But also and kind
of more fundamentally, I'm alsointerested in the kind of
affective and epistemologicaland political registers of
contemporary culture and howthis kind of irresolvable
tension becomes a mode, or thiskind of substrate of existence.
(50:02):
In the book when I startthinking about this tension,
like what does it mean to mountthis project on this
irresolvable tension and then tokind of build it out this way.
What we have by the end of thebook is this picture in which we
trace through the examples andthe analysis the ways that this
system has an attendant otherset of irresolvable tensions at
(50:25):
its core. It produces these kindof other irresolvable tensions.
So for instance, between, youknow, humanitarian and
capitalism and between thebiological or biospheric and
then the economic and thenbetween global health and
militarized approach to seeingthe world. Within this program,
the kind of divergent aims ofthese kind of areas become and
(50:47):
are made coterminous. So then,you know, I'm particularly
interested in how this happensthrough technological
proliferation, right?
We just have to keep buildingtechnologies and optimize the
world as this platform so thatthese things can be done. And if
we do it, then these things thatseem to be contradictory will
come into some kind ofharmonization. You know,
(51:07):
humanitarian efforts andcapitalism can really kind of
meet happily if we just kind ofproceed this way. What I hope I
can offer is just in kind oftracing a way to contextualize
and understand why things feelso bad, why things feel so hard,
like, how is it that we have allof this data and we can do all
(51:30):
of these things with data? Wehave all of this power and
states have this incredibleeconomic clout and there's all
of this goodwill and all of thisexists, but we can't.
One thing we can kind of look atis the way that, technocratic
modes of governance have kindacome to the floor as this kind
of answer to all of theseproblems and the thing that's
(51:52):
gonna massage out all of theseinconsistencies. If we can kinda
see that as this problem, thenwe can also point to it, and
it's kind of a reversal as apossible way out.
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer (52:03):
Well, thanks to you both, and thanks
for having this conversation.Maybe I'll invite us all to go
do something gross.
Gloria Chan-Sook Kim (52:11):
Yeah. I hope to meet you all in person
one day and toast with probablya cocktail consisting of many
microbes.
Amber Benezra (52:20):
Absolutely. We have to get our material part of
our collaboration here. We'vehad our semiotic. We need the
material.
Narrator (52:27):
This has been a University of Minnesota press
production. Books by Amber BenEzra, Gloria Chansook Kim, and
Matthew Wolfmeyer are availablefrom University of Minnesota
Press. Thank you for listening.
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